The conventional approach to an engineering design and development effort tends to be inefficient, costly and cumbersome in many respects. For example, the input that designers receive from manufacturers during the design process is generally limited to information relating to particular manufacturing capabilities, and therefore designers often generate designs without the benefit of reliable estimates of the cost or time required to manufacture a component. While prototype machine shops are helpful in the process of finalizing a component design, they can be expensive, and generally may not provide a good indication of costs associated with high volume manufacturing.
Even when a design is completed, the process of finding a qualified manufacturer typically involves an inefficient process of identifying potential candidates through word-of-mouth or a costly search. Cultural and/or language barriers often exist. It is often difficult to accurately determine the quality of a manufacturer's past performance and accurately predict the quality of the proposed future performance. Even where several acceptable manufacturers are identified, such a group is likely to represent only a fraction of the qualified pool of manufacturers. This lessens competition and often results in increased costs and decreased quality for the designer. Furthermore, even when a qualified manufacturer is identified, the process of negotiating an agreement on performance typically requires numerous phone calls and face-to-face meetings. Where manufacturing limitations result in design modifications, additional negotiation between the designer and the manufacturer is often required before a mutually acceptable design is agreed upon that meets both performance and manufacturing requirements. The time and effort entailed in this process is usually significant.
In view of these challenges to the conventional approach, several computer-based systems for estimating design and manufacturing costs have been developed. For example, systems have been developed that are configured to receive design data relating to an object that has been designed using a computer aided design (“CAD”) program. Such data is referred to herein as “design information” or “component design information”. Such systems are capable of extracting cost factors from the design data, such as the size and shape of the parts that comprise the object. Manufacturing cost estimates are then generated based on generalized manufacturing rules and the extracted cost factors, thereby providing an automated alternative to the conventional approach described herein. These systems allow cost estimates to be generated even when a project is at a preliminary planning stage.